Are the Best Small Companies the Best Investments?

Previous research finds that large companies previously judged to be excellent growth companies have subsequently been poor investments. We examine small companies selected by Business Week on the basis of multiple criteria used in annual articles featuring highly rated growth companies. We study the investment performance over the three years before eleven annual Business Week publications and the three years after publication. We find positive excess returns in the pre‐publication period, but negative excess returns in the post‐publication period. This reversal in investment performance appears to be due to a mean‐reversion tendency in operating performance, in which the earnings and the past rates of return on capital of such companies subsequently decrease significantly.     

Pension Reform, Capital Markets and the Rate of Return

Abstract. This paper discusses the consequences of population aging and a fundamental pension reform – that is, a shift towards more pre‐funding – for capital markets in Germany. We use a stylized closed‐economy, overlapping‐generations model to compare the effects of the recent German pension reform with those of a more decisive reform that would freeze the current pay‐as‐you‐go contribution rate and thus result in a larger funded component of the pension system. We predict rates of return to capital under both reform scenarios over a long horizon, taking demographic projections as given. Our main finding is that the future decrease in the rate of return is much smaller than often claimed in the public debate. Our simulations show that the capital stock will decrease once the baby‐boom generations enter retirement, even if there were no fundamental pension reform. The corresponding decrease in the rate of return, the direct effect of population aging, is around 0.7 percentage points. While the capital market effects of the recent German pension reform are marginal, the rate of return to capital would decrease by an additional 0.5 percentage points under the more decisive reform proposal.     

美国、日本等国家和中国台湾地区利率自由化的经验与启示

美国、日本、印度、智利等国家以及中国台湾地区利率自由化的经验与教训对中国利率市场化有着重要的启示。通过对其利率自由化步骤和过程的分析可以看出,金融市场比较成熟是其改革的前提,逐步放宽管制是其改革步骤,即在金融市场比较成熟的条件下推进利率自由化。中国不能直接照搬这些操作,而应该先培育金融市场,待实现利率市场化之后,再参考这些经验,深化利率改革。